Floor cleaning apparatus are heavy, bulky, and cumbersome to operate. Orbital floor cleaning apparatus exacerbates the negative aspects of floor cleaning apparatus due to offset weights used to achieve orbital motion. The weights are used to achieve desirable cleaning oscillations. Unfortunately, such apparatus are made to be heavy to counterbalance motions of the weights. The result is a difficult to use apparatus that provides an uncomfortable experience for the user. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,355,542 to Oreck et al. titled “Orbiter Floor Apparatus”, granted Oct. 18, 1994, describes a floor cleaning apparatus that is bulky and difficult to use.
One issue with the Oreck approach is that is requires many off center moving parts are required to achieve desired orbital motion at the expense of user comfort. Such approaches are considered disadvantageous because the parts create numerous stresses during use. A more ideal orbital floor cleaning system would utilize fewer parts with higher precision to generating desirable motion, while also balancing user comfort.
What has yet to be appreciated is floor cleaning apparatus can be produced to have modular parts to allow users to quickly adapt an apparatus for a particular purpose. Such an apparatus can include an orbital drive assembly configured with few parts, thus eliminating costly maintenance or downtime. Furthermore, the modularity of an apparatus allows non-technical users to quickly replace parts, to upgrade the apparatus, or otherwise configure the apparatus for a target application. A modular apparatus allow for easily breaking the apparatus down and transporting it to new locations. Such an approach can be advantageously employed while maintaining a comfortable experience for the user.
Thus, there is still a need for orbital cleaning apparatus.